Weekending in Libya by Jim Keeble
Featured Hotel in Libya
“Welcome to Libya!” wave the schoolgirls from the marble Roman steps. My American wife Jessica waves back tentatively. As a small girl in 1980s Colorado, she grew up terrified of Colonel Gadaffi, who was portrayed on nightly newscasts by Ronald Reagan as “the Mad Dog of the Middle East”.
“I never thought I’d come here,” Jessica murmurs as we head on to the next epic Roman building in the epic Libyan site of Leptis Magna. Behind us, one of the schoolgirls snaps our picture. We try not to feel like Britney Spears.
I too never thought I’d visit Libya, in the same way I never thought I’d visit Prague or Moscow before 1989. Yet times have changed. Following Tony Blair’s “historic” visit to Colonel Gadaffi’s tent in April, it’s now so easy to travel to Libya from the UK that one company, The Traveller, is offering three night, four day, weekend breaks. Flying time is 3 ½ hours (less than to Athens). You can trip to Tripoli on a Thursday, and be back in London for the evening news on Sunday.
“Call us when you get back… if you get back,” joked friends before our departure. Nervously, we did our research, but there seemed to be scant literature about Libya – just one guidebook and a few articles obsessed with the lack of alcohol and the presence of tourist police.
All our trepidation vanishes upon arrival in Tripoli. In fact, we feel a little bashful. At passport control, the only intimidation we encounter is the incessant piped Bryan Adams songs. Jessica’s American passport is stamped without comment.
“Welcome to Libya,” declares the official, with a reserved smile that reminds me of home.
Most tourists come to Libya for Leptis Magna and Sabrathra, which are arguably the greatest Roman sites in the world. As a rule, such Romano-enthusiasts tend to have grey hair. Of the very few other visitors we encounter in Libya, we are the youngest by about thirty years.
Which is a shame. Because as we discover, Libya has much more to offer than just ancient history.
The 30 minute drive into Tripoli quickly reveals a modern Arab city. Libya is a relatively wealthy country with a GDP per capita of $7,900 (above Brazil, Turkey and China). This brings in immigrants from all over Africa (Egyptian labourers earn five times Cairo wages in Tripoli). Whereas other oil-producing nations net about 25% of oil revenues, following the revolution in 1969 Gadaffi insisted on 50%. With oil prices currently soaring, Libya is getting richer every day.
The four lane highway is busy with Japanese and Korean cars - one of Colonel Gadaffi’s many aphorisms is that every Libyan should own an automobile. Government officials can purchase new cars at a third of market price, which, combined with petrol prices of about 1p a litre, makes motoring in Libya about as expensive as skateboarding in England.
All along the highway, new suburban apartment blocks sprout meadows of satellite dishes – most Libyans get more world TV channels than we do (at a one-off cost of £80). Unsurprisingly, given The Colonel’s passion for cars, Top Gear seems to be one of the most watched shows.
Despite the country’s wealth, Libyan hotels are not the most luxurious. The Al Yosser is a comfortable, simple three star hotel with A/C and sparkling new bathroom, close to one of the districts bombed by the US in 1986 (130 people were killed, including one of Gadaffi’s adopted daughters). As I unpack my bag, I recall that April 15th night 28 years ago, playing basketball in Cambridge against the local American Air Force base. We were surprised that only half the team showed up – only later did we realise why.
Our first contact with the new Libya is an amble around central Tripoli, which offers a pleasant mix of older Islamic buildings and younger Italian architecture (one of the few positive affects of a brutal Italian occupation from 1911-1942, during which a quarter of Libya’s population died, many in concentration camps). We stroll through the Medina, stopping to view the towering Roman arch of Marcus Aurelius, and the delicately beautiful 230 year old Gurgi Mosque with its exquisite Moroccan style stucco walls.
Throughout the gently crumbling souks, which offer gold jewellery, striped silk wedding shawls and carefully worked metal trays and giant crescent ornaments for mosque minarets, we are surprised at the lack of attention paid to us. There seems little of the chaotic revelry that typifies many other Arab souks. The people are friendly, but reserved. Everyone is polite. No one tries to sell us anything. Unlike other Arab countries, haggling seems to be about as common as at Selfridges. It all feels almost… English.
Even if you don’t have grey hair, you must visit the Roman site of Leptis Magna, which easily makes my top five Man-Made World Wonders, alongside the Pyramids, the Empire State, Big Ben, and the west stand at Southampton’s St. Mary’s Stadium. A city covering 2km, once housing 100,000 inhabitants, it was second only to Rome during the reign of Libyan Emperor Septimus Severus (who died, tragically for him, in York, a chilly1600 miles from his sun-drenched Mediterranean birthplace).
Leptis was originally a Phoenician trading port, and prospered for nearly 1000 years before Vandal invasions and sand storms brought its downfall. The vast city remained buried for 1300 years, despite the attentions of a cleptomaniac 18th-century French consul who transported shiploads of plundered marble columns back to Versailles. It wasn’t until a major excavation by Italian and Libyan archaeologists in the 1920s that the hardy limestone and marble wonders were exposed.
We arrive at 10am to find ourselves alone in what feels like a Technicolor movie set, with us as the only actors. Pacing the paved streets of Leptis Magna (the raised central slabs carried an intricate sewerage system at a time when my English ancestors were thankful for a hole in the woods), you can almost hear the chariots and cries of storekeepers.
Every turn reveals a more imposing view. The ruins are a breathtaking blend of the intimate – marble carvings and small Latin inscriptions you can caress with one finger, and the epic – soaring columns, gargantuan four-storey walls, and a sweeping theatre that looks as if it was finished last week. Our jaws drop at the magnificent Hadrian bath-complex, with its 40ft high columns and Olympic size pools. If I were Hadrian I think I’d rather be associated with this fabulous building than that old damp wall near Scotland. In its heyday the dome over the Frigidarium towered 100 feet over the baths, adorned with blue mosaics. This was the Canyon Ranch of the second century.
It’s clear Leptis’ planners knew more about showcase architecture than any Vegas casino owner – the Severus Forum is literally as large as Wembley Stadium whilst the Basilica is as big as Westminster Abbey, only more grandiose. Lining one side of the Forum are stone Medusa faces with eyes that still bedevil the onlooker, whilst at the far end, under a columned portico, the remains of a Roman bar recall present-day cafes in Florentine or Venetian piazzas.
Beyond the main city, dug into a hillside by the sea is a huge 15,000 capacity circular arena. We are the only visitors clambering over the piles of marble rubble where gladiators once gladiated. The emptiness of the entire site is remarkable. I wonder if this was what it is was like to visit northern Mediterranean Roman sites in the 1800s –unfettered and highly personal.
In the neighbouring Leptis museum we admire the countless exquisite artifacts dug from the sand - immaculate statues, tiny glass phials used for collecting tears shed for the dead and placed alongside cremation urns, and Roman coins, still clearly stamped with the head of Septimus Severus. At the museum exit is a more modern Libyan Emperor - a 20ft high Colonel Gadaffi, his crotch either innocently or purposefully placed exactly where foreigners stand to have their picture taken.
We see plenty of giant Gadaffis on our travels, but his iconographic portraits feel about as oppressive (and numerous) as the posters of David Beckham in most English cities. The Colonel is arguably more stylish – here in mint green robes gazing enigmatically skywards, there in 70s retro sunglasses and jauntily arranged headscarf like an Arab Ryan O’Neal.
In fact, 2004 Libya feels remarkable for its normality – Tripoli’s Gargaresh Street abounds with shops selling Plasma TVs, Piaggio scooters, and Gucci sunglasses. Rapper 50 Cent blares from brand new BMWs, and young Libyan women try on Bulgari perfume. There’s a Nike store, internet cafes and cool clothes shops that wouldn’t be out of place in Covent Garden.
Whilst the food is slightly less sophisticated – Libyan dishes do not rival Moroccan or Turkish cuisine, you can eat well in Tripoli, albeit in a somewhat repetitive fashion. On three nights at three different restaurants we enjoy the same formula – fish soup, salad buffet, grilled fish and crème caramel, as if we’ve been caught in some North-African Groundhog Day. Yet, despite its repetitiveness, the food is freshly delicious and we survive quite happily without alcohol (unlike the elderly Italian tour group we catch pouring themselves wine under the table like naughty teenagers). Instead, we become quietly addicted to the champagne of Libyan soft drinks – masabiyah Jamaica, a heady cocktail of 7-Up, Coke and indefinable bright orange soda.
On our second full day, we head south-west of Tripoli into the Jebel Nafusa hills to see a different side to Libya’s history. This is Berber country – the indigenous tribe who ruled North-Africa long before the Romans and maintain their traditions and language as proudly as the Basques or Welsh. At Qasr Al-Haj we visit a 12th-century granary where villagers “banked” their grain to trade with caravans heading south to the desert, marveling at the four storey circular walls which served as a near-impregnable fortress in times of conflict.
At Tarmeisa, a young man called Bashar shows us around the small biblical streets of his ancestors village, which he’s helping to restore. Perched on a rock precipice, the site is unassailable from three sides, with a vertiginous 1000 feet drop at one end. In a bid to impress his visitors, Bashar clambers out over the rock like Spiderman. We applaud his return with overwhelming relief. He invites us to his house, where we sit in the Marbooaj (literally “sitting room”) drinking tea and eating bsisa, a traditional corn paste sprinkled with sugar. Bashar speaks only one word of English.
“Welcome,” he declares, softly, as we depart.
Late in the afternoon, we stop high above a deep green spring laced with palms, and gaze out to the shimmering plain which announces the heat of the Sahara 100km away. It’s hot. Actually it’s sizzling. Al-Aziziyah, where we stopped for picnic provisions, has recorded the hottest temperature in history – a balmy 136?F . As weekend trips from England go, we both agree, it doesn’t get more exotic than this.
On our last morning, we wander one last time through the Tripoli Medina, un-hassled and almost un-noticed. By the excellent Tripoli museum, with its impressive collection of Roman and Islamic artifacts, we pause for one last photograph in front of Beckham Gadaffi.
“He doesn’t seem so scary now,” smiles Jessica. Neither does Libya.
Visit soon. You will be welcome.